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Friday, November 30, 2012

Tyler was walking to school and stopped
suddenly when he heard, "Hey kid, watch where you're going?". He
looked down and saw an angry ant shaking its fist at him.

This is how I introduce realism and fantasy.
I tell this story about one of my children and then tell a realistic version of
the same story. I list the elements of both genres on an anchor chart and we
practice identifying each genre during whole group reading using Reading Street.

After practice during guided reading, I will
put out books in a bag for reading workshop.I choose books of similar themes, one fantasy and one realistic fiction.
My freebie is a link to the printable the children fill out to compare the two
books. I have also used the books in a bag as a take home activity. Click on the picture below to download.

This is a fun time of the year to use this activity with holiday books. Enjoy!

Sunday, November 25, 2012

So
much of what we do each day is a balancing act. Balancing the needs of
students, all the demands of our job, our families, etc. Balancing time for ourselves can get lost in
it all.

For me personally, I feel out of balance if I don't take care of
myself mentally and spiritually. I need to take time to relax and read something inspirational. I found a website called The TeacherDevotion.A new weekly devotion from
The Polished Apple devotions is posted each week. This week's devotion talks
about the importance of our words as we strive to make a difference in each
student's lives.

It reminds me of the quote, "People will
forget what you said, people will forget what you did,but people will never forget how you made
them feel."-Maya Angelou

So when I hit the ground running tomorrow, I
will replay the words in my mind and keep my own words balanced with grace andencouragement for others.

Friday, November 23, 2012

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving! Of course I ate too much and still fill
stuffed today. I love this time of year
though. Planning lessons with the
holidays in mind is so much fun. I'm also looking forward to Cyber Monday and
all of the wonderful resources on TPT that will be on sale.

Keeping my current curriculum in mind, I created a three digit addition
with regrouping freebie with a reindeer theme. My children have their Christmas
program next week with that same theme, so I will give them the paper for
morning work while playing the music for their program in the background.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Freebie Friday!After a long stressful week, I'm thankful for
our three day week coming up. I'm looking forward to three days of Thanksgiving
themed activities.

As I said in a previous post, my favorite
read aloud at this time is T'was the Night Before Thanksgiving. It is fun and rich with vocabulary. It is the
perfect story for interesting words to do a word sort.Terrain,
clatter, aloft, etc. This year I made turkey word sort cards for the children
to write the words on and cut out to sort. They also can use the words as a
word bank for creative writing.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Flashing back over last week, we finished up
our Veteran's Day thank you letters and cards. Our school has a Veteran's Day
assembly and parade tomorrow in which will we give the Veterans the Thank
You's. It never fails, each year I tear up as the Veterans march up the
hallways with the Patriotic Music in the background.

We also finished up our Penguin Life Cycle
projects. This is part of an integrated reading & science unit I created based
on the story Penguin Chick in the Reading Street series. The unit is available at my TPT store. I have
a freebie also for download from a previous post. Here it is again.